I had an appointment on Tuesday at a salon in SF to get my hair cut. Although there's no way I could possibly afford the prices the place normally charges, they have a hair model program — if you're willing to work with their schedule and to have them take twice as long to do the cut as it would normally take, you can get a cut for $15.

When I made the appointment, I spoke with the woman who'd be cutting my hair. "So how long is your hair?" she asked.

"Very short," I said. "Very, very short on the sides & back, a little longer on top, and bangs longest. At the longest, it's 3.5 inches long."

"Okay," she said, and we proceeded to set up the appointment.

So I show up at the salon on Tuesday, check in, sign the form, change into the smock, and report to the waiting area where I'm introduced to the stylist. "Oh..." she says, "...your hair's really short...."

Well, yeah. We spoke about that. "Do you mean it's too short for me to be a hair model?" I asked.

"Oh... no..." she said. "...It's just that I'm not studying short cuts... and the students who are just started the unit this week... [drops voice] ...so you probably want to wait until after January 1 to make an appointment so they'll have gotten some practice first...."

ARRRRGGGHHH!!!!!

She was perfectly nice, I was perfectly nice, everyone was perfectly nice — but for this I burned 4 hours of vacation time*, spent almost $6 on BART fares, and schlepped into San Francisco, which is really not one of my favorite things to do? Grrrrrr.

I got a new watchband at the jeweler's down the street before heading back to Oakland, so the trip wasn't a total waste. But really, when I look in the mirror, my first thought is not "Gee, that's a good-looking watchband!" it's "Wow, I really need a trim."

So now I'm not sure what to do. I don't really want to get a full-on cut, as I haven't given up yet on the whole hair model thing. And I don't want to dye it myself; I've been letting the color grow out so I could see what my natural color is at this point (wasn't sure any more) and since I want to get it colored through the hair model program as well, I'd rather not pre-fry it by coloring it at home.

Maybe I'll go to SuperCuts and tell them that the length and shape are basically okay, it just needs to be cleaned up and texturized a bit. That might make it tolerable until I can get it cut the way I want to.

She did tell me that the technical term for the kind of cut I have is "scissors-over-comb", so I now know what to say when talking with a stylist. Maybe that will help avoid future misunderstandings.

-----------*Since I'd scheduled the time off and was already out of the office, I certainly wasn't going to go back to work. Pirate and I went and fed the birds by Lake Merritt instead.